Scope and Contents

X/3 The shut book, which itself extends the theme of the opening illustration, represents the answer to Dante's question on the perception of time by the inhabitants of Hell. Time, for them, diminishes towards the present and their awareness of events will cease altogether at the Last Judgement which will mark the closing of the book of future time. All this is embodied here in the picture of a book drawn in exaggerated reverse perspective with human events lying as it were beyond it, shut and clasped as it is. The book features reinforcing imagery in the form of an eclipse, a handless watch, and the final letters of the alphabet (Z and Omega). The collage elements representing the medley of human activity come appropriately enough from old copies of the Illustrated London News. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

XXV/4 The fragments of Laocoon that were used as the frontispiece of this Canto in an emblematic and formal way are here reassembled (as the reptilian elements in the text reassemble and change) to make a more organic figuration. The classical elements are rearranged to form a mannerist/romantic group, a transcription of the original energies of the sculpture. The colouring is intended to recall the muscular feats of Michelangelo's supermen and the sexual implications of the formal elements are given free reign as if to combine the themes of the preceding illustrations. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Canto XXVI/1 GODI FIORENZA, the opening cry of this canto is here writ large (very large in fact since the original drawing for the lettering is fifty inches high) and in sombre colours, to stress its irony. The only gleam of relief lies in the slight displacement of positive and negative plates which, so to speak, by deliberate error serves to outline the words which would otherwise be almost indistinguishable. A Florence which Dante castigates for its loss of honour and brightness is here characterised by a lily in bloodless grey. The coarseness of texture implies a slogan in the manner of wall graffiti (`Up Arsenal' etc.) -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents XXXIII/3 The first personaliiies we meet in hell are Paolo and Francesca. Francesca's is the first voice we hear and she is the only woman from among Hell's denizens who speaks at all. She can thus, as has been pointed out in the notes to Canto V, be taken to stand for Eve, the primal sinner, whose child Cain gives his name to the region we have just passed through. Thus the first and last couples we meet are locked together, the one in love and the other in hate. In both cases only one of the pair speaks to tell a story which might elicit pity. The shadow of Eve is therefore thrown from a moon-like enlargement in negative of her name, from, as it were, the beginning to the end of Hell, set forever in a sky of dark stars. The shadow comes to rest on the coupled skulls of Ruggiero and Ugolino, which are themselves merely tilted and joined adaptations of the heads (after Michelangelo's Adam and Eve) of Paolo and Francesca from Canto V/4. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth...

Scope and Contents This consists of a stage 1 proof and stage 2 proof (the final print) for the frontispiece of the deluxe limited edition of the book; it also served as the illustration for the dust jacket of the trade edition published by Thames and Hudson. The Stage 1 proof indicated that the image was the Editions Electo version. Phillips comments are as follows: This print in the original edition is a twenty-seven colour screenprint and is loosely based on a small reproduction of a painting attributed (equally loosely I think) to Signorelli. I have departed from this source in almost all respects and have introduced a back window which looks out on a quasi-metaphysical landscape that includes a rocky outcrop (derived from a nude photograph in an erotic magazine called in Depth') in front of which stands a cypress tree; a traditional reference to death but here also in form and position relating to a phallus. The juxtaposition recalls the idea (cf. Canto XXXIV/3) that any visit to the underworld...

Scope and Contents

This suite of stage proofs for the title page was done for the deluxe limited edition of the book; a different title page was utilized for the trade edition published by Thames and Hudson. It includes stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. The firsr five are printed on texts of Phillips translations of the Inferno. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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In a section entitled "A Note on the Original Edition," Phillips mentions the following, "Heartening support was given by Ruth and Leo Phillips as well as the many patient collectors who bought their copies before a picture or a line was printed. Amongst those I should particularly like to mention Marvin and Ruth Sackner without those staunch encouragement the seven year trial of making the edition would have seemed so much less suprerable." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This print is from the first version of the work which was mostly destroyed in a fire at Editions Alecto. Less than three copies of the prints from the first version survived. Tom Phillips did not select this image for his final version of the Inferno. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Phillips annotates "A Dante Diary," "The Archive Copies," and the "The Notebooks." All of these works are held by the Sackner Archive. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first edition of Dante's Inferno in which both the translation and the illustrations were done by the same person. Two representive illustrations are depicted in this record. In the image illustrating Canto III, Phillips describes the changes in his notes to the book. "Not satisfied with any of the colour trials I made in the first version of this, which depicted the dreary waters of the Styx, I cut the various proofs into strips and brought different versions into conjunction, hence the appropriate half repetition of the short text which, together with the recapitulations of the same stretch of the sombre steam, suggests the monotony of Charon's task as Ferryman. The words 'bitter boating' seemed also to echo his mocking speech."In the image that illustrates Canto V from the initial proof copy, Phillips eliminated the calligraphic text of the poem, changed the background from black to gray and pink, painted a giant phallus with balls entering the vagina, printed the...

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Tom Phillips' "Divine Comedy" and Jasper Johns' "Fizzels," mentioned in the review are held by the Sackner Archive. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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The design of the dust jacket and 40 black and white grainy photographic images were provided by Tom Phillips to illustrate Willliams' poems. The book and its typography were designed by Donato Cinicolo 3 who employed a large variety of typefaces including those from a typewriter. Jonathan Williams also contributed notes on the poems as well as an afterword. A slip inserted into the book states that as a result of a disagreement between the publishers and one of the authors over the book design, the publishers decided not to publish it. Before this decision was reached, 120 copies were bound and distributed to friends of the Trigram Press. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The design of the dust jacket and 40 black and white grainy photographic images were provided by Tom Phillips to illustrate Willliams' poems. The book and its typography were designed by Donato Cinicolo 3 who employed a large variety of typefaces including those from a typewriter. Jonathan Williams also contributed notes on the poems as well as an afterword. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Phillips' illustrations on 21 pages were based upon "A Humument" style of images. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Phillips' contributed 21 illustrations based upon "A Humument" imagery. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This unusual exhibition catalog, which itself can be classified as an artist book, consists of booklets with reproductions from limited editioned artist and illustrated books. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.